Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because is public domain. I am grateful.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 10

The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions
were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind
instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of
popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more
undemonstrable, more supernatural than all—the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it.
For we can hear skepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so
far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the
idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained
tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.
I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things
that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities precisely is a belief in objective truth. The pragmatist tells
a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute. But precisely one of the things that he must think is the Absolute. This
philosophy, indeed, is a kind of verbal paradox. Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more
than a pragmatist. Extreme pragmatism is just as inhuman as the determinism it so powerfully attacks. The determinist (who, to do him
justice, does not pretend to be a human being) makes nonsense of the human sense of actual choice. The pragmatist, who professes to be specially
human, makes nonsense of the human sense of actual fact.
Exactly as complete free thought involves the doubting of thought itself, so the acceptation of mere “willing” really paralyzes the will. Mr.
Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real difference between the old utilitarian test of pleasure (clumsy, of course, and easily misstated) and
that which he propounds. The real difference between the test of happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of happiness is a test and
the other isn’t. You can discuss whether a man’s act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was
derived from will. Of course it was. You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to
save the soul. But you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of will
you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the
will you are praising.Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here.Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.